Video: Managing derivative versions in Aperture

When you're working in Aperture, you have a lot of image editing tools. Actually, most of the things that you would need to work on a photograph; Exposure, White Balance, Brushing tools, there is a lot of stuff here. But there will be those occasion when some photographers feel like they need to go to an outside image editor to do something special. Most of the time that will be Photoshop, and that's called round tripping. And I want to show you the implications of round tripping when you're working within Aperture. First thing I want to point out; we're going to go to Metadata here.

In this course, photographer Derrick Story teaches the concepts and techniques behind efficient photo management and backup, which becomes increasingly important as a photo collection grows. The course begins by showing how to transfer and organize photos "by hand"—that is, by copying them from a memory card to a hard drive without using software. In the second portion of the course, discover how to take advantage of the photo-management features provided by programs such as Lightroom and Aperture, by assigning descriptive keywords, by giving photos ratings and color-coded labels, and how smart album features can automatically collect photos that meet certain criteria.

The course concludes with a look at aspects of a good backup and archival strategy, ranging from the best file format for long-term backup to the best hardware options for offline storage.

Managing derivative versions in Aperture

When you're working in Aperture, you have a lot of image editing tools. Actually,most of the things that you would need to work on a photograph;Exposure, White Balance, Brushing tools, there is a lot of stuff here.But there will be those occasion when some photographers feel like they need togo to an outside image editor to do something special.Most of the time that will be Photoshop, and that's called round tripping. AndI want to show you the implications of round tripping when you're working within Aperture.First thing I want to point out;we're going to go to Metadata here.

The size of this image is 22 MB, and that's after some image editing.Because it's a nondestructive editor, it only added a few kilobytes ofinformation in order to edit the file.When we go to Photoshop that's going to be a story, and it's going to come back a large file.One of the things to consider, and one of the reasons why you don't want toround trip anymore than you have to, because it eats up hard disk space.Now let's send this over to Photoshop.I'm going to hold down the Control key; I'm going to say Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Aperture is going to prepare the file for Photoshop, and then send it over, andPhotoshop is going to open it up. So here we go.We're in Photoshop right now.I'm just going to do something simple.I'm going to create a levels adjustment layer, and we'll make a few adjustmentshere, just like this, just some basic stuff.Okay, we've made our adjustments;all I have to do is choose Save in order to send the file back to Aperture.

So we'll go down here to Save, click OK.Photoshop saves the file, sends it back to Aperture, which means I can close it here now.We're done in Photoshop for the moment.Now I'm going to double-click here to go back to Thumbnails, and you'll see we'vetwo files, both 8380.The Photoshop file, the one that's round-tripped has an additional badge, abull's eye. And that lets us know that this file has been outside of Aperture, and has come back.

So here is our original file and here is our Photoshop file, and you notice thatthe file also came back larger. 50, almost 51 MB, compared to 22 MB, and this isthe reason why we don't want to do this anymore than you absolutely have to. Andsometimes those files get much bigger.Now, in order to keep track of the file so that you have files of like kindtogether, I recommend that you create a stack. And the way that you do that; holddown the Command key and select this one, so now they are both selected. I go to Stacks,I choose Stack, and they go in this nice and neat container.

And you notice the stack, because it has this frame around it, and it has the number.Now the number tells you how many photos are in that stack.You can have more than two; you can have three, four, eight, however many youwant, and that will be represented in this number.And you can collapse that stack by clicking on that number, and now you justhave one image, but you know that there are more images of like kind behind it,because you have that stack number.And if you decide that you want to have a different image on top,for example, if you want the Photoshop image on top, you just select it, we go toStacks, we make it the Pick, and now it's on top, and you collapse your stack.

So there are a couple things to keep in mind if you go outside of Aperturefor your image editing. Once you know those things then you can make a good decision.I recommend for special images it's worth it. For your everyday workI think there are enough tools in Aperture to achieve the effects that you wantwithout round-tripping to an outside editor.

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